Meter's Ticking for Costly Simpson Defense

By SETH MYDANS

Published: July 31, 1994

LOS ANGELES, July 30—
How much will O. J. Simpson have to pay for his ever-expanding defense team of lawyers, investigators and experts? Many outside lawyers answer with a question of their own: How much money does he have?

"A defense like this will cost your net worth -- whatever it is, they'll take it," said John Shepard Wiley, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles. "I'm just staggered at the number of lawyers and scientists and investigators that are being daily added to the team."

One high-end guess came from Robert A. Pugsley, a criminal-law professor at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles, who said, "When you add in everything -- the investigators, all the lawyers, the pathologists, the experts, the transportation and travel, the whole kit and caboodle -- I think a first trial lasting through the end of this calendar year could come to about $5 million."

Unusual Costs in Unusual Case

As the Simpson case unfolds on live television, it is providing a nationwide seminar on the workings of a murder trial. But legal experts caution that most felony defendants are poor and that the trial of a typical defendant, with far less than $5 million to spend, would look very different.

Most people accused of murder could not afford even one of Mr. Simpson's lawyers. In general, such defendants are represented by public defenders or court-appointed lawyers, who put in an average of just 500 to 750 hours on a case, said Robert Spangenberg, who heads the Spangenberg Group, a private criminal-justice research group.

"The average hourly fee for court-appointed lawyers around the country in death-penalty cases is $50 an hour, and there are severe restrictions in some states like Alabama, where the maximum fee is set by statute at $1,000," he said.

At the time of Mr. Simpson's divorce in 1992, he was estimated in court papers to be worth $10.8 million and to be earning $730,000 to $1 million a year in endorsements and broadcasting fees. His home in the Brentwood section, for example, is estimated to be worth $5 million.

Mr. Simpson has placed many of his assets, including the Brentwood home and several local hotels and restaurants, in four holding companies. As recently as June 29, he consolidated many of his assets in one of these companies, Pigskins Inc., apparently to protect them from any civil suits against him.

It is not uncommon for lawyers to be paid in property -- a yacht or a private airplane -- and some lawyers here say Mr. Simpson's house, or his expensive cars, could be part of a fee arrangement.

Fee Arrangements Possible

Top defense lawyers generally charge a flat fee, and the fee for a celebrity lawyer in a capital case can start at $500,000, said Charles L. Lindner, past president of the Los Angeles Criminal Bar Association. In Mr. Simpson's case, 10 lawyers have so far appeared publicly or signed legal briefs for him, so his legal fees are sure to be in the millions.

Some lawyers in the case may be willing to accept relatively low fees because they expect to benefit from the publicity, legal experts said.

In addition to attorney fees, the experts said, Mr. Simpson will probably spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a parallel investigation his lawyers have started.

Fees for a jury specialist are expected to reach $100,000 or more. The cost of expert witnesses could be several hundred thousand dollars. Daily court transcripts could cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, lawyers said.

In an interview, Mr. Shapiro declined to say how much or in what manner he was being paid. He said he and his colleagues would coordinate their work "the same way the three tenors did at the concert: you put your egos aside, emphasize your strengths, and everyone will perform better."

Harnessing Strong Egos

Some lawyers who are observing the expanding Simpson defense are skeptical of this. "I can't see how that team can work together. It's almost impossible to put that many egos in place and ever get any consensus," said James P. Linn, an Oklahoma City lawyer who represents Imelda Marcos in her continuing legal cases both here and in the Philippines.

Responding to widespread speculation, Mr. Shapiro said in the interview that he would continue as chief trial lawyer, sharing courtroom arguments with the newest addition to the team, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., one of the city's top trial lawyers.

The roles of some of his other colleagues were less clear, particularly for two high-profile lawyers from out of town. One of these, Alan M. Dershowitz has so far signed one pretrial brief, and the other, F. Lee Bailey, may have been retained for his expertise in pretrial publicity. Mr. Bailey's success in arguing the issue in the case of Dr. Sam Shepard in the 1950's was cited in an early brief in the Simpson case.

Also on the team are Gerald Uelmen, retiring dean of the Santa Clara Law School, who is writing many of the legal briefs; Robert Kardashian, a close friend of Mr. Simpson who says he is helping out without pay; LeRoy Taft, Mr. Simpson's personal lawyer, and Sara L. Caplan, an associate of Mr. Shapiro.

Two experts in the use of DNA blood typing as evidence, Barry C. Scheck and Peter Neufeld, drew up the legal brief on the issue for a preliminary hearing, and Mr. Scheck argued the brief in court. They in turn have enlisted two leading scholars on DNA testing as defense experts.

As Mr. Simpson's psychiatrist -- who would be a crucial witness if he chose an insanity defense -- his lawyers have brought in Dr. Saul J. Faerstein, a frequent expert witness. "He is another in the stable of experts, which includes, I'm sure, plenty of experts we haven't heard about," Mr. Wiley said.

This full-court press is, among other things, an effort to put the prosecution on the defensive by looking over the shoulders of the prosecution's investigators and laboratory technicians and dogging their footsteps, by flooding the prosecutors with new leads to pursue and by challenging their findings and analyses.

What does all this effort produce in the end for a wealthy defendant like Mr. Simpson? At a minimum, said Susan Estrich, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, he may be able to buy reasonable doubt, as his lawyers, investigators and experts worry away from all angles at the prosecution's evidence.

Especially in a case that is based, like this one, on circumstantial evidence, she said, "the usual foibles, errors, inadequacies and ineptness" of a criminal investigation can be magnified. And reasonable doubt is all that Mr. Simpson needs to go free.